The FSU Condemns Anti-Trans and Homophobic Legislation

3/21/2023

The FSU LGBTQIA+ Caucus leaders and the FSU Executive Committee strongly condemn the recent legislative attacks on trans and queer people in the United States, including those targeting students: “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, bans on gender affirming care, limitations on trans athletes participating in school sports, and book bans. Each of these create dangerous atmospheres for trans and queer students, stifle faculty and staff from supporting students, and scare educators away from including curricula about the LGBTQIA+ population. Taken together, this set of legislation represents an attempt to stigmatize and harm members of the trans and queer community and undermine progress that has been made to support this population. The combination of these efforts along with actions intended to silence educators when it comes to teaching about systemic racism and intersectionality and attempts to dismantle DEI efforts in education paint an alarming landscape. We stand in solidarity with those who are fighting these attacks and encourage our members to engage with organizations standing up for the right of all students to have an inclusive and honest education that supports every individual.

These violent attacks are not new. The Gay Rights Movement was a direct response to State and cultural violence. In 1966 the police were called to remove drag queens and trans people from Compton’s Cafeteria. The queens and trans women responded; they fought back and were arrested. Nearly three years later in 1969 trans women of color and butch lesbians led the revolt at the historic Stonewall Inn. With boots on our necks, LGBTQIA+ people fight back.

And the boots are on our necks.

The very laws that permitted police to harass and bully drag queens, butch lesbians, and trans people in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, are the same laws we see being enacted throughout the country today. This is not a Southern thing nor a “that state over there” thing. These actions spill over into all states as they signal to the culture at large that homophobia and transphobia are acceptable, and silence is read as acceptance. This isn’t even a “gay” thing. While queer and trans people suffer uniquely because their gender expression and gender identities make them easy targets for abuse, policing gender and sexuality norms affects every single one of us. It is not right. It is simply not right.

And so, in response to the vile, backwards cultural violence that members of our union and queer and trans people across our country are experiencing today, we say “no more.” With our condemnation of these laws, proposed and enacted, the FSU, with encouragement from the leaders of the newly constituted LGBTQIA+ Caucus, declares the following call to action:

Speak to those in your lives that would support the passing of these deplorable bills. Tell them that this violence must stop and entreat them to speak to their legislators. We must help those who would support these laws to see the damage this is doing to our colleagues. Ultimately, you must do what is just and right to put an end to that which harms trans and gender nonconforming people.

Our trans colleagues must have free access to the medical care they need. Our gender nonconforming colleagues, the butch lesbians, the femme gay men, the nonbinary beauties who stomp the runways of their lives deserve a life of joy in the bodies and clothing and styles they desire. We must protect trans children, queer children, and children with queer parents from those who would do them harm. We must work toward a society that empowers every queer and trans person to live an authentic life, free from fear and violence.

They will not stop at trans people, drag queens, butch lesbians, and femme boys. Stonewall and Compton’s Cafeteria quieted them down. They are quiet no more. Neither must we be.

Janna Kellinger, Jessica Holden, and Timothy Oleksiak of the FSU LGBTQIA+ Caucus

and

The Faculty Staff Union Executive Committee